QNAP TS-h973AX ZFS NAS Hardware Review
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- čas přidán 1. 07. 2024
- QNAP TS-h973AX NAS Review - ZFS? 10G? U.2 NVMe? Too Good to be True? nascompares.com/2020/11/13/qn...
Network-attached storage for both home and business provide fewer surprises every year. Whether it is the power of the hardware or the capability of the software, the innovations that continue to roll out of the big brands in NAS make less and less of an impact. This doesn’t make those achievements any less important, it is merely that so many good things can now be done with a private server that we expect them to do many of these things by default. Late last year when QNAP unveiled their new parallel operating system for enterprise, QuTS Hero, many were impressed but sceptical that a full performance and software equipped ZFS NAS could be possible at this arguably lower price point and hardware tier - sure, you can run it on a rackmount, but that’s quite a high price! Fast forward a year and not only do we find that you can now affordable own a fully-featured and well-equipped ZFS NAS from QNAP with Intel Xeon under the desktop bonnet, but we are also starting to see far more modest hardware devices such as the QNAP TS-h973AX arrive on the scene and challenge how expensive or powerful a ZFS NAS needs to be. Today’s review of the QNAP TS-h973AX triple-tier ZFS NAS system, available for around £850 with tax, is about confirming weather enterprise-grade features and functionality can genuinely be purchased at the consumer-grade price point. Arriving with three separate media tiers for storage that include U.2 NVMe, 10GbE connectivity, a ZFS based file system and all of this running with the affordable Ryzen AMD V1500B processor - does this NAS fly too close to the sun or could this be one of the biggest game-changers in the market we’ve seen in years? Let’s find out.
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Yes, please do some speed tests that give us an idea of the maximum IO bandwidth we can get over the 10Gbe connection for things like video editing. Thanks!
Thanks for the video. I'm looking to replace my old QNAP TS-469L (7 years, no issues) and considering the TS-h973AX. I was almost ready to pull the trigger on a TS-932PX, but when the TS-h973AX was announced I figured I'd wait. Glad I did. Thanks again.
Awesome review! Like a couple of others, I’d be interested in some speed tests to see how this system would hold up for video editing. Particularly with the SSD trays, it seems you could edit directly with these over 10GbE, then archive footage and saved projects to the 5 bay HDDs. Would love to know how it would handle 4K or even 6K like this.
Beast, what about speed tests (for video editing) and how to setup for the first time, thanks mate!
This is fantastic video thanks and my comment is not on the video, but on my experience having owned a TS-h973AX. My unit failed within 2 years. The reseller messed up and 'lost' my repaired drive and couldn't source me a new unit. QNAP frankly did not care about my warranty. They were completely fine with the way the reseller dealt with the issue. So anyone buying a QNAP unit, beware. Your warranty with QNAP is useless and cannot be enforced.
I love your channel. It is my one of my go-to when it comes to NAS. That having been said, I don't think a product review should take more than 10 minutes. I find myself fast-forwarding because at some point, it gets repetitive. Discuss the product, the pros and the cons. Done. Not past videos and older material. Not here for that Just constructive criticism. Hope you see it as such.
The ultimate home NAS. I've been waiting for this for years. Great for VM storage, backup server, video editing, whatever you like. ZFS and ECC means it can be used for business critical stuff too. Ticks all the boxes!
Would be perfect with 6 disks for mirrored vdev
ECC is not present out of box unfortunately. List of compatible ECC RAM is being prepared though, according to QNAP on reddit.
@@pzpzpzpzpzpzpzpz Oh I see. It will support ECC but it's not supplied with ECC.
Its a handsome NAS, they've made subtle tweaks to chassis, so it looks more polished. On the ECC RAM, honestly, the theory is great, but rarely realised.
I'm seriously hoping they will do a fresh on the TS-873 line with this CPU, ZFS and replace the onboard M.2 SATA with NVMe.
Thanks for the informative video. Do you have any recommendations dor a NAS with QNAPS quick access that allows to connect via USB-C and transfer files directly to the NAS from a non computer device e.g. a camera?
I realize this is a NETWORK attached storage device but am I able to connect my Mac to one of the USB ports for data transfer as well?
I'm looking forward to a more detailed software review. Since ZFS is so massively configurable, it would be good to have a better understanding of what QNAP is doing with regards to the ZFS capability set (can partitions be assigned to ZIL, or only full drives), is L2ARC persistent or does it need to be rebuilt from scratch on every reboot, maybe some CPU utilization reports when serving up different types of workload (large block/bulk xfer versus small block random io). Thanks the the great videos.
As an aside, it would be great to see some comparisons of specific features between multiple NAS offerings (virtual machine apps on each, containers on each, etc.)
If you're using ZFS, can you use a single U.2 drive, without manual intervention and looping partitions, for both ARC and ZIL caches or do we have to separate cache types into separate, thus two/both U.2 slots?
Can then, should the first one be used for caches, the other U.2 slot be running in SATA mode for a 3 disk SATA SSD tier with redundancy/parity or do they require both be switched to be used at the same speed?
Or maybe does the Qtiering here work even better than just manually assigning a device for cache'ing for ARC or ZIL or whatever QNAP implements as cache'ing when using ZFS for the main/cold tier?
And finally, can you upgrade ZFS raidz1 HDD pool with those SSD dedicated tiers at a later date or do you have to have all the tiers populated?
Irrespective of that, does the Qtier still enforce using same parity mode as on the cold/first-created tier on upgrades using other tiers thus requiring you to add at least 2 devices of the same type if you opted for any form of redundancy/parity on the first created tier?
Do you have a par of M.2 SSD till U.2 adapters to test ?
I heard so many issues with qnap I considering the qnap but I’M hearing so many bad things disconnected alot hardware and software issuess I dont know which direction synology with there locked hardrives? so I'm not what diection to go with
I want one. I’ll take over testing for you. It won’t be easy but I’ll do it. I have the perfect place in my rack for it with active monitored cooling and a fiber gigabit internet connection.
You know I really want to test their new router you reviewed the other day, to see actual speeds you could get with their SD wan site to site. If I had two sites in the same city both with gigabit internet up down, could I actually get file transfer speeds of 100MBps. I do it all the time connecting to Aspera servers in the same city (Los Angeles), getting constantly 100-115MBps. Transferring large video files to from companies with 10 or 40Gb internet connections.
That is a bufk FU to Synology. This is a great device. If I wasnt already knee deep into Syno I'd go with this.
Under the ZFS system. If I wanted a Raid 6 level of protection do you think that the 5 3.5 inch drives are enough as under raid 2 drives are gone?
Would be perfect if it was 6 disks for mirrored vdev
Have you done any follow ups?
I remember there was a Intel xeon just under 2k + drives variant do you have the model number, also with the new graphics cards out this year do you know if the will support anything newer than the 1650ti for 4k encode and decoding
H886?
The TS-h886 should fit. 1650Ti's were just added to the compatibility list with a supported feature of Hardware Transcoding. Zotac and Gigabyte options.
Thank you guys
@@ram64man ....check out the H1288 too though. It’s more expensive than the H886, but it has a Xeon CPU with embedded GPU, so should be much better for transcoding I think.
@@TheLDunn1 do you mean tvs-1288? I don't think the Intel uhd graphics will be powerful enough without dropping frames of multiple 4k cams 4 to be exact and video streaming/encoding I'm thinking morw along the lines of a quotro or possibly one of the entry new gen cards if it meets the power requirements
I wonder if any of the NAS companies are considering Epyc embedded at all.
can you upgrade the ram yourself ?
So it's there no way to not use zfs? I would prefer btrsfs
Hi, I just tried to purchase this unit and got a message from the retailer saying that QNAP is having technical issues with this unit and are no longer shipping them out. do you have any news about this?
Any update on this? I am considering this now in 2021 September.
I just ordered one from Amazon ... is this valid? 😬
i dont know if you answer these question but anyway . can i put 2.5 inch sata drives non ssd
I'm afraid you cannot use SATA traditional SSDs. Only NVMe M.2 SSDs that are PCIe4 in architecture.
I do answer the comments, but mainly answer through the free advice section on NASCompares here (so then it's fair for everyone) - nascompares.com/contact-us/
@@nascompares thank you very much for replying im looking for a nas and the ssd drives slots would be a waste for me so i will go for the 6 bay instead at the same price point thanks again
The U.2 connector is neither proprietary nor SAS. It is PCIe.
Span lists this with ECC RAM out of the box.
Good morning everyone, after a few months with this product TS-h973AX it has proven to be the most unreliable piece of hardware from QNAP. Totally unstable, becomes unaccessible while using the web interface or SMB or any other way. Worst part since it doesn't have a front LCD panel you have no idea what's going one. Will be returned for RMA but where to store 5x 14TB, 2x2TB NVMe Cache and 3x 2TB SSD's of data in the meantime.
Sad to hear. I have mine since a couple of days and it is running fine so far except after reboot, have to wait 20min for it to be accessible. Other than that it is fine. Did this happens over time or is your unit faulty ?
@@levraichris3321 It happened from day one. Got replaced twice and always with the same outcome. QNAP replaced the unit with a TVS-872X and moved all my drives and RAM over to the new unit and it has run flawlessly since day one. So it wasn’t the RAM the issues as the many tests were pointing to with the 973.
@@luminaire7085 Mine is all good so far, that is really weird. In the end, it was a good thing for you, you got a nice upgrade !
I know you talk about the packaging, but do people actually care whether the packaging is pretty or not ?
I care about it. It shows you about the effort put my company for such details.
@@Neehamk ok fair enough. So you're prepared to pay for higher price for product based on packaging (meaning the exterior of the packaging)?
Usually no - But with a NAS yes, as I tend to swap to a newer model every 6-12 months (insane, I know).. So I sell my previous on, so good packaging means I don't need to find alternative when shipping.
Thank you for the review. I have an TS-870 (2013) with 5x WD Gold 4TB (RAID 5) and 3x Crucial MX500 2TB (RAID 5)+ 1 Intel X540-T2 10 GbE RJ45 Dual Port NIC.
Never been able to get max troughtpur on my 10 GbE link, max I can get is around 120 MB/s with either the SATA HHD or SSDs. QNAP has told me in the past wheter I had 500 MB/s SSDs it wouldn't make a difference in performance.
Now, one of my clients uses Synology and gets much better performance out of similar configs, wouldn't want to invest in a new QNAP and not get the max throughput from SSDs and U.2 NVMe drives.
I've tested U.2 NVMe drives on Cisco UCS Servers running VMware VSAN (4 drive cluster as a minimum for a demo) and performance was incredible but will QNAP at $1.3K/CAD do the same with only 2 of them?
Will replace my aging TS-870 in the next few months but I see that this unit TS-h973AX doesn't have an expansion PCIe port as I have dual port 10 GbE for redundancy and LAG for added performance.
The TS-870 wasn't able to reach 10gbps network throughput. Qnap states on their site: "Up to 447MB/s read and 426MB/s write speed with optional 10GbE support". The problem in this NAS is that the CPU isn't beefy enough to be able that level of network throughput. Also, Qnap's advertized speed would require jumbo frames, and particular type of IO pattern (large, high queue depth, etc.). Modern NAS have much more powerful CPUs, and they don't struggle with 10gbps net throughput.
Nice. First lol
My opinion is based on my couple of years experience on QNAP. Don't buy it. Buy something more stable. QNAP software is crap and will give you outages and outages over and over again. For example recent firmware update done by system and after firmware update, can't login. Means can't access anything because of encrypted storage. QNAP responded after 2 days and their instructions didn't fix the issue still. No response for last 24 hours and I'm still waiting after 4 days of complete outage. Hoping that eventually at least it gets fixed without any data loss. It has been a disaster situation so far. Time I have spent on QNAP issues working with them again and again every now and then is really just too much too handle when I have already too much work going on.
(already responded to your other enq, but repeating here for others) Thank you for sharing your feedback and experience with QNAP on this. It's import for users to see how brands interact with customers and more over to see how issues are dealt with. Keep us updated on this as much as you can. Cheers dude.
@@nascompares One week of total NAS downtime and still counting. No luck yet. They asked to replace RAM to original ADATA which I told them will never cause issue of such symptoms, I still replaced for their peace of mind and progress on case, but that didn't make any diffierence with ADATA RAM. Nothing changed. Issue persisted. Crap software and support both. Qcrap is right name.
External powerbrick is soooo cheap and unprofessional. It chases me away from qnap actually. Any self respecting company doesnt fiddle with an adapter.
If it would be conveinient, why isnt it on the pro series and rackmount series then. Diddipating heat? thru a plastic housing, really? i think a fan blowing over a heatsink will give me a lot better feeling of a serious psu... Im afraid i'll jump to synology because of this... Adapter... tsssss... Toys...